


careless or unkind

by caelam (tennciel)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, almost a character study of sorts?, felix-centric, set pre-timeskip right before everything goes tits up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21674770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tennciel/pseuds/caelam
Summary: “Look,” Sylvain says, “what do you want from me?”Felix does not answer.“Do you want me toapologize? For saving your life?” He laughs, light and mocking, like the concept of not giving his life for Felix should be the premise of a hit comedy sketch. Like his own life having value ought to be the final punchline of a stand-up show.On the precipice of war, Sylvain is injured. Felix copes.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 139





	careless or unkind

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "when am i gonna lose you" by local natives which is an excellent band that everyone should listen to
> 
> i have a disease that makes me think about felix hugo fraldarius almost constantly. i furiously wrote this to alleviate some of my symptoms. unfortunately for all of us, i definitely just made it worse

There was always something about Garreg Mach that made it feel divorced from time—something too knowing in the thick stone walls, cold and lingering like a threat. Back when he’d first arrived, walking about the monastery had made Felix shiver, its hollow echoes and dull religious overtones somehow even worse than the most biting winters of Faerghus. But he’d grown used to it by now, and no longer inwardly flinched at the sound of his boots _clack_ ing on the stone, or curled his fingers into fists at the stifling silences that settled into the monastery’s corners.

Those silences had a tendency to creep in and hang in the air when they were unwelcome and inappropriate—like now, for example. One would think that news of this caliber— _did you hear? the new Empress Edelgard von Hresvelg has declared a war on all we’ve ever known_ —would cause widespread panic and discord. But the inside of the monastery is as quiet as death, professors and knights walking briskly with grim faces, students huddling in groups with their heads bowed together, whispering. He knows, he understands. No one is willing to speak a war into existence.

But Felix has never been one for gossip or worry or lying idle, and he does not allow the silence’s empty space to be filled by his thoughts. Which is how it happens that on the same day that the new Empress opts to declare she will destroy life as he knows it, Felix Fraldarius goes to the training grounds. 

There’s no one here to spar with him, likely because no one but him would respond to existential threat with immediate sword training. He elects instead to work solo on his technique and footwork, leaping and parrying, swinging and guarding, breaking out in a thin sheen of sweat. At no point in the process does he think—about the future, about his classmates, about anything.

He isn’t sure what time it is when he finally hears footsteps behind him. He turns and sees, unexpectedly, Mercedes, who is holding a plate of food she must have nabbed from the dining hall. 

“I assumed you’d be here,” she says, voice soft. “I also assumed you wouldn’t have eaten.”

“That’s unnecessary, but thanks,” he replies, making no move to take it from her. He doesn’t even spare a glance at whatever’s on the plate.

Mercedes notices, he knows. She’s always been one of the most perceptive in their house—hell, maybe even in Garreg Mach, although Claude might be able to give her a run for her money. But Mercedes is also blessed with something Felix has never once possessed, which is quiet tact, and so she says nothing of his blatant refusal. She instead gives him a long look that he doesn’t meet and gently sets the plate on the floor by the entrance—an open invitation, whenever he’s ready to take it. The plate makes a dull _clink_ when it connects with the ground. It feels loud in Felix’s ears. 

In his peripheral vision—he still hasn’t turned to her— he sees her watch him a moment longer and then pivot, sees for just a second her retreating back, and his mouth falls open before he can stop it.

“Mercedes,” he says. “Is he awake?”

He hears her footfalls stop, sees the line of her shoulders tense. He’s still not willing to look directly at her, but he knows, _he knows_ , even before she quietly shakes her head.

He breathes in, breathes out. Tightens his grip on his training sword and swings again.

That’s the first day.

———

When he tries to remember it, it goes like this:

The musty green expanse of the holy tomb, and Byleth, ordering them to _get the crest stones_. There were too many men, mysterious imperial soldiers clothed in red and black, and all of them moved too fast. Felix was a quick fighter and always had been, and so he knew that he could stop them, knew that it would be largely up to him to stop them, and that nagging sense of one-part personal responsibility and one-part pride made him reckless. 

He should have slowed down, should have stayed in range where Mercedes could have cast a quick healing spell on him, but the dumb imperial bandits were _getting away_ , and the air in the tomb was musty and stale, and the stupid boar seemed to unravel a bit more with each passing soldier. He had a sword in his hand and he knew he could stop them so he _charged_ , the sprint burning in his legs and his lungs. The shock on the enemy’s face was a sweet satisfaction, the retrieved crest stone so minuscule and yet feeling like a thousand-pound burden in his hand.

The victory was short-lived, however, because he soon came to realize that he was much farther ahead than the rest of his class and now effectively surrounded. He could hear the professor shouting panicked orders behind him, felt a brief moment of guilt for ignoring orders and doing something like this in the first place, before he had to put all thoughts in his head behind and focus on the threat in front of him.

It was always something of a second nature to him, swinging a sword, but even he had his limits. It started when one of the mages got a good hit in, the spell hitting him squarely in his back and spreading pain from his neck to his toes. He moved sluggishly, after that— still dodging, but less efficiently, and he felt it for the first time, that brief and all-encompassing moment where his brain just said _fuck_.

He heard more than saw it, the clatter of horse hooves and Sylvain’s impudent and annoying taunts directed at those around him. He took a brief moment to contemplate that it was kind of fucked up that this tomb was big enough to fit horses in it at all, before he turned to Sylvain to say something akin to _thank you_ , turned just in time to see the throwing axe come out of nowhere, see Sylvain lunge in front of him to block it, and he froze. 

The blunt impact of the axe slamming into Sylvain’s armor sent him flying backward, clean off his horse, and there was a resounding, horrifying _crack_ as Sylvain’s stupid big head collided with the hard stone corners of one of the tomb’s altars. Felix— screamed, maybe, he didn’t really know— and charged forward to finish off the rest of the soldiers around him in blind panic, yelling for the professor or Mercedes or _anyone_. The area by Sylvain’s head was red, so much redder just his hair, so much redder than it was ever supposed to be. 

Eventually—or maybe immediately, he can’t remember clearly—he saw one of the calvary units from the Knights of Seiros that had come as allies pulling Sylvain onto their horse, making a hasty retreat and getting him out of the fray of battle. Sylvain’s head was slumped, his limbs hanging like a limp ragdoll.

And Felix— well, Felix continued fighting, because that was all he could do.

The rest of it he doesn’t really remember, or didn’t want to remember, or maybe couldn’t remember because of the nagging knowledge that Sylvain was bleeding out somewhere on the back of a church knight’s horse all because he was a moron, and because Felix was a moron as well.

He knows, logically, that they fought, and the Flame Emperor was unveiled, and the wild boar made his public debut for the whole house to see. He had thought that he would be happier about that when the day came, when he could smugly look at the others who always scolded him for how he treated Dimitri and say _I told you so_. But the look in Dimitri’s eyes, and the look in everyone else’s eyes when they looked at him, did not really make him feel smug or victorious. It mostly just made him feel hollow.

And even still, despite all the things that happened that day—in the space behind his eyelids when he tries to sleep, it goes like this: a crack, followed by red, red, red, and a feeling like ice in his veins and bile in his throat, rising up in a tidal wave.

———

The following days pass slow and quick all at once—they attend class like normal, but the atmosphere of the classroom is downtrodden and subdued. They repeatedly have substitute professors, because the tactics and abilities of Byleth are in high demand by the frantically planning church, and when the class does get to see Byleth, they look more tired and miserable than Felix has ever seen them before. They really never got to get over the grief of their father before being thrust into fighting, Felix thinks, and then thinks about the rest of the Blue Lions house and can’t help a sardonic laugh. 

Their professor, at the very least, is in good company.

Everyone’s bags grow heavier under their eyes, pulled down by it all—the war, ever looming, Dimitri, ever unhinged, Sylvain, fast asleep. He knows the Black Eagle house is in complete disarray, what with their house leader vanishing, committing patricide, and then declaring a war on organized religion, but Felix personally doesn’t feel like his house is faring much better. Faerghus has never really fared better, though, in any situation. Maybe it’s fitting.

By the fourth day, Felix has resorted to lingering outside of the infirmary like some sort of recalcitrant ghost. He still has yet to enter, because he knows Sylvain has yet to wake up, and there is something foolish and cowardly in him that refuses to see Sylvain unconscious. It would be too unsettling—Sylvain, who so rarely allows silence, laying there limp like the dead. 

“It’s because it’s a head injury,” Manuela had told them. “Magic doesn’t really heal, it just helps the body heal itself faster—but bodies are bad at healing themselves when it’s the brain that needs healing.”

She doesn’t say that Sylvain might not wake up, but she doesn’t need to—the thought clearly flits over her face from time to time, clear as day to anyone who is looking for it. It’s another reason Felix refuses to step into the infirmary.

But the other Blue Lions do visit Sylvain and sit with him, and Felix knows that one of them will inform him when (or if) Sylvain wakes up. Felix sees them sometimes, from his vaguely angry perch several meters away from the entrance. Most of them make eye contact with him as they leave, but either benevolence or self-preservation prohibit them from commenting on his frequent presence there.

The boar does not visit. Felix knows, perhaps too well, that’s there little room for anything in Dimitri’s head but twisted revenge and underprocessed grief right now, but to him it’s still a shitty excuse. Sylvain is—or was supposed to be, at least—one of his oldest and closest friends. 

Felix allows himself to feel angry about it for only a few minutes before the anger added onto everything else simply becomes too exhausting. So much of the grief in his life has already been wrapped up in and surrounding Dimitri, and right now, he is both unwilling and unable to allow him more.

By the 9th day, Felix thinks that he’s had enough, and he’s just going to march in there and slap Sylvain awake, which some moronic part of his brain is telling him will work. He walks into the infirmary with purpose, sees half a glance of dull, red hair splayed out on a pillow, and turns around and immediately walks back out.

He goes to the training grounds, instead.

———

It’s Ingrid, who tells him. It’s the 13th day—almost two full weeks, not that Felix had been counting. (He had, most certainly, been counting.)

She looks exhausted, and Felix takes a brief moment to feel guilty for not noticing how much she’d been struggling lately. Ingrid’s dedication to being the perfect knight had always strung her thin. There is only so much one individual can really keep safe, and her desire to protect Faerghus, Sylvain, and Dimitri as both a king and a friend cannot be doing her any favors when none of them are faring well. But despite the drag on her shoulders and the dark around her eyes, there’s something bright and hopeful in her countenance when she says it. _He’s awake_.

“I had to tell you first,” shes says. “I know you want.... I know he wants to see you.”

He notices her mistake but does not comment on it, that fact that she chose not to say _I know you want to see him_. Perhaps she didn’t know how Felix would react to it. Perhaps it was just so obvious it didn’t justify saying.

He still hesitates at the door to the infirmary, though, because he suddenly realizes he has no idea what _he_ wants to say. Thirteen days is a long time for anger at Sylvain’s foolishness to subside, for grief and worry to tangle around his ribcage— but now that Sylvain is awake he feels the anger flooding back, anger mixed with the horrible remnants of fear and something else Felix cannot entirely name.

Being pissed off wins out, as it usually does with Felix, so he marches right into the infirmary radiating a venomous displeasure he is sure can be felt down the hall.

“Sylvain,” he bites out. This is his announcement that he’s entering the room.

Sylvain turns from where he’s sitting up in the infirmary bed, looking slightly thinner and paler but still brightening upon seeing Felix. 

“Mornin’, Fe,” he says, and then he _winks_ , because he’s the worst person in all of Fodlan. 

“Morning, my ass. You take a two week coma and you greet me with _mornin’_?”

“I think was 13 days, actually.”

“ _Sylvain_.”

“Okay, okay, relax,” Sylvain says with a wave and a laugh. “I’m awake now, so what does it even matter?”

“You could very easily _not_ be awake. I’ve got no idea what the hell you were thinking, you— you—“

“I was _thinking,_ ” Sylvain cuts in, his brows knitted together, “that I would save your dumb ass from its heroic solo charge in the Holy Tomb. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“That’s not the point,” Felix says, a little desperate. “I mean, thank you, for that— but that’s not the fucking point.” 

But it’s futile, he knows, because Sylvain didn’t have to _be_ there. He didn’t have to witness the collision, hear the crack, watch the red, red, red drip by slowly in a space near his feet.

Felix cannot make Sylvain understand.

Once, many moons back, Felix had had a dream about Glenn. He’d immediately known it was a dream because it’d followed hazy, dream-like logic, sounds too loud and people flickering in and out of his peripheral vision. He’d also known it was a dream, of course, because Glenn was there.

It was a celebration. In the great hall of the Fraldarius family home, extravagantly dressed people tittered about with gifts, surrounding an equally extravagant and decorated Glenn. He accepted all their praises with a gracious and white-toothed smile. He basked in pride.

Suddenly, the crowd had parted, and their father walked forward with a fond look, placing his hand gently on Glenn’s upper back. 

_I am so proud of you,_ his father had said. And then, in slow motion, they both turned to Felix and looked him straight in the eyes, their unspoken request pounding through his head.

Felix had known, then, what his role in this dream was. It was to ruin it.

Glenn took one step forward, still pleased. Felix took one step back. The room slowed and stilled, the chattering of the guests coming to a stop. Glenn’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Felix,” he said, placating. 

“You promised,” Felix said. _You said you'd always come back._

It was juvenile, and as soon as he said it, Felix became aware that his dream body was one of a much younger self. He was back in the body of a Felix who cried and threw tantrums, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to throw a tantrum right then, right there in the center of the hall.

“Felix,” his father said. A warning.

“You _promised_.”

And, because apparently the goddess had cursed Felix to lack eloquence in the way he wanted even in his dreams, he quickly realized it was the only thing he could say. _You promised. You promised. You promised._

He’d said it until he woke up, until the party had evaporated and Glenn’s face twisted into something he could no longer recognize. 

In this moment in the infirmary with Sylvain, Felix remembers the dream with vivid clarity. A foolish, naive part of him wants to say it again, in real life this time—wants to stamp his feet and scream like a child, wants to grab Sylvain by the collar and shake him, and remind him _you promised._

It was stupid of him, always, to want stability out of Sylvain. If Felix had really ever had a choice, goddess knows he ought to have chosen someone else. But in many ways, Sylvain was all he had left of a life that had unravelled away from him. His brother was gone, and grief had twisted his relationship with his father into something unsalvageable. The Dimitri he remembered had long been replaced by a beast, and the world he had inhabited was slipping into the cracks of war. But Sylvain— Sylvain was the same. Steady and ever-present, nonchalant and irritating and charming. Always. 

Felix had always told himself that he wasn’t so weak as to not be able to adapt to a changing reality around him. But it had hit him, that day in the Holy Tomb, just how desperately he needed at least one thing in his life to be permanent. 

_I can’t lose you too_ , Felix wants to say. _You promised._

He knows himself well enough to know he’ll never say it out loud. 

As Felix experiences these thoughts, Sylvain, who has been cursed with the ability to read Felix like a book, clearly sees on his face that there's currently something deeper going on than typical Felix-brand annoyance. Unfortunately, his ability to read Felix’s mind only goes so far, and Felix watches his brows knit together once again in confusion.

“Look,” Sylvain says, “what do you want from me?”

Felix does not answer.

“Do you want me to _apologize_? For saving your life?” He laughs, light and mocking, like the concept of not giving his life for Felix should be the premise of a hit comedy sketch. Like his own life having value ought to be the final punchline of a stand-up show. 

“I’m not going to apologize, Felix,” he says. Definite. Steady in the way Sylvain always is, confident in his death sentence. 

Felix does respond this time. “I know.”

He is tired, he realizes, so tired, and somehow he has waited thirteen days to have less than a full paragraph to say. There is nothing left in him that is willing to bother with words, not when he knows, like always, that the things he has to say will inevitably fall on deaf ears.

He gets up to leave, and Sylvain’s hand darts out to catch his wrist. It lingers there for a moment, almost unsure, before tightening around Felix’s bony hand like he’s afraid it’s going to evaporate in his grip. Felix looks at it, contemplates it, knows Sylvain is trying to reach across the moat around Felix’s heart that he has no one to blame for but himself. It makes something deep in Felix ache, something he never wants to think about ever again.

There are many things he should say, suspended in this fragile moment with Sylvain’s hand on his wrist. He shakes the hold loose instead.

“Recover quickly,” he says. 

It is both a demand and a request. It doesn’t come out quite as scathing as Felix would like. 

———

They tell him Sylvain is going to be okay. Manuela catches him on his heavy footed stalk out of the infirmary, informs him that the brunt of the wound is healed, and Sylvain got lucky— a few more days of healing magic and bottled concoctions and he’ll be nothing more than a bit dizzy if he walks too fast. In a week’s time, he’ll be as good as new.

_Just in time for the imperial army,_ she leaves unspoken. _Just in time to help us fight back._

Felix brusquely thanks her for the information and continues on his way— proceeding to idly wander around the monastery, vague and discontent. All around, younger students and civilians stand with rolling trunks and small satchels, those not proficient in fighting ordered to evacuate and go home. There are tearful goodbyes and thick layers of uncertainty in the air, and it makes Felix feel faintly nauseous.

He goes to the dining hall but cannot bring himself to feel an appetite, choosing instead to choke down a few bites of whatever the daily special is and call it a day. He tries to go to the training grounds but Ingrid is there sparring with Leonie, and she effectively bars him from entry.

(Her exact words are, _Felix Fraldarius, if you don’t go rest and try to step one single foot into these training grounds, I’m going to kick your ass_ , and she has the look in her eyes that he knows means she means it. He thinks that’s quite unfair, and would on certain occasions just ignore her and train anyway—but Leonie looks like she also wants to gleefully participate in the ass-kicking, and even he can recognize a lost cause when he sees one.)

With nothing to do and nothing to focus on—and goddess knows he isn’t going to go _rest_ —Felix can only walk aimlessly. He ends up, somehow, on the upper outer balconies of the cathedral, overlooking the vast expanse of mountains and trees and endless green that surrounds Garreg Mach. 

It takes him a moment to realize he’s not alone, startling when he hears a sniffle near him. He turns and sees Annette, curled into herself and looking even smaller than usual, and his brain short circuits for a moment. 

“Annette,” he says, eloquently.

“Oh,” Annette hiccups, “Felix.”

She hasn’t declared him to be evil for committing some unknown crime yet, so Felix figures this interaction with her is going better than it usually does. 

He also respects Annette enough to know that she doesn’t want to talk right now, and Felix is absolutely terrible at talking through problems anyway. He walks over to her with light steps and sits down without making a sound, practically holding his breath, not wanting to unbalance her. They watch the gently swaying trees of the outskirts of Garreg Mach with quiet reverence and a touch of helplessness. Only Annette’s stilted sniffles interrupt the calm. She is trying not to cry, he knows. He knows what that feeling is like all too well.

“Felix,” Annette says, eventually. She is not speaking loudly, but her words carry in the wind. “What’s going to happen to all of us?”

Were he talking to anyone else, he knows what his response would be. Something mundane about bloodshed and strength, something sharp in its curtness and simplicity, a brash statement that they would all just fight and continue to fight because there's nothing else, in either Fodlan or life, to do.

But this is Annette, who studies for fun and sings songs about her lunch, and his throat feels glued shut.

“I don’t know,” he says, instead. 

Admitting it feels like giving something up, like he’s allowed something to be ripped out of his stomach and left to fester against the cold gray of Garreg Mach, limp and lifeless and bleeding for all the world to see. 

The silence returns. Felix sits in it for a long time. He sits there long after Annette has excused herself for the night, sits and watches as the sun sinks down over the hills in a brilliant, horrifying red.

The trees sway and the birds flutter up to their nests to retreat for the coming darkness. Sitting there watching the quiet serenity, it almost looks like nothing is wrong. Almost.

But elsewhere, he knows, the imperial army is marching ever closer, one step at a time. Felix closes his eyes and allows himself to process the frigid, timeless air of Garreg Mach’s winter for one last fleeting second. He grips the hilt of the sword at his hip until his knuckles turn white, and then he stands up.

He goes to the training grounds.

———

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me about felix fraldarius on [twitter](https://twitter.com/baldcae)


End file.
